Former Qantas crew face financial uncertainty, delays in compensation payouts ahead of former CEO’s book launch

Late last year, former Qantas boss Alan Joyce told the world that he had written a book about his tenure at the top of the airline. He has not had to wait long for its publication. That will happen on Tuesday.

More than 1800 of his former workers, mostly ground crew, baggage handlers and cleaners, have been waiting a lot longer for the final chapter of their Qantas story.

That group, unlawfully sacked by the airline in an outsourcing drive amid the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and vindicated by a case that went all the way to the High Court in 2023, have still largely not received their compensation. Qantas’ years of legal opposition, followed by complex compensation calculations, have seen to that.

One former Qantas employee, Don Dixon, says staff believed a job with a national icon, which many had held for decades, offered security. “This was a simple workforce,” Dixon says. Life is not simple any more. The group has fractured, with many disillusioned, some traumatised, and others angry, both at Qantas and their own side. They are watching the airline turn the page on the story, and the Transport Workers Union walk away with a $50 million payout, while Maurice Blackburn lawyers have been slow to apportion the millions awarded for compensation payouts.

Last year, the Federal Court ordered Qantas to pay a penalty of $90 million, with $50 million to the union. It had already been ordered to pay $120 million in compensation. That $120 million figure included an immediate payment of $9000 to each of the 1820 sacked workers, with the remainder to be divvied up between them based on their individual experience. But that process is dragging on.

Adelaide University Professor Andrew Beer, who studied the effects of job loss on blue-collar workers in the collapse of Australia’s car industry, has seen the toll sudden unemployment takes.

“People can’t deal with the uncertainty, particularly men,” Beer says. “They find it very stressful.” Their “mental and their physical health declines” initially because they have a “very strong sense of loss, and that has an impact on them”. “They’re also more likely to experience relationship trauma in terms of losing their partner,” Beer says. Many will transition into an “involuntary retirement”.

This masthead spoke to five workers to understand how they have coped since their dismissal nearly six years ago.

Paul Harper, Sydney, 69

Paul Harper loved his life working for Qantas. For 4½ years he cleaned aircraft, then laboured in baggage handling.

“It was excellent, like paid exercise,” says Harper, from Mortdale, just west of the city’s airport.

The sudden loss of pay at age 63 put a strain on his finances. “It got a bit hard,” he says, after moving into semi-retirement last year. “I get money out of my super to keep me going,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to do that.

“If you have bills to pay, you can’t just let them build up.” Harper was fortunate enough to have some rental income too.

The job loss wasn’t Harper’s first brush with Qantas’ industrial strategies under Joyce’s tenure. He was employed by Qantas Ground Services, which he describes as a “labour hire” company that paid lower wage rates than Qantas.

The airline’s staff resented QGS workers because “we were undermining their position” by doing the same work for less pay.

“A very mixed up dirty little process that whole thing was.” Looking back on the episode, he says: “Qantas, I feel, is very untrustworthy to do this kind of thing.

“I don’t think this new chief executive [Vanessa Hudson] is any different from the previous one. Alan Joyce only worried about his bonus and pay packet.”

Qantas chief Vanessa Hudson has apologised to workers, and said the company was working to rebuild trust.

Natalie, Sydney, 59

After initially being laid off, aged 54, Natalie (whose real name has been withheld) couldn’t pay her rent. The former Qantas cleaner received an eviction notice from her home.

That night she cried herself to sleep. “I contacted a union delegate to help me get my redundancy quicker so I didn’t get evicted,” she says.

Eventually, Natalie found employment. She got a permanent job in 2022, after two weeks of training, in an aviation-related field. The compensation process is bringing back “ugly memories”, she says.

Maurice Blackburn “seems to be dragging [it] out”, she says, referring to the independent medical examiners she has had to face.

Fired staff were assessed for economic loss, but now must be questioned about non-economic loss, such as the emotional toll, humiliation and psychological harm they experienced. However, Maurice Blackburn says the economic and non-economic loss will be paid together.

Natalie says: “Everyone is saying how their anxiety levels have just been raised all over again … How can a lawyer measure my anxiety levels five years ago to pay my compensation?”

Damien Pollard, Canberra, 59

It’s been a “tough six years” for former baggage handler Damien Pollard since he finished work in 2021. Outside aviation, “there’s not a lot of call for someone who knows how to push back aircraft and load them correctly”, he says.

He’s had a variety of jobs in the transportation industry, as well as a “number of periods” of unemployment, when his partner’s income kept the family afloat. “We’re all very much looking forward to moving on,” he says.

After the initial burst of public interest in the mass firings, “all the court cases and everything being constantly dragged up and brought up into the news didn’t allow for a lot of time to heal”. In the early days of the TWU’s court case – which later resulted in Qantas paying $120 million in compensation and $90 million in penalties – former colleagues turned down full-time jobs in the hope they would get their jobs back at the airline.

“A lot of people are still miffed they couldn’t get their job back,” says the union delegate.

When Pollard did initially go back to work, he took a job with an airline catering company. “It was pretty raw going to that job because I was working in the same premises, on the same tarmac, as the people who took over my job,” he says. “I was watching the people performing the duties that we did – and just seeing obvious mistakes. It used to drive me insane.

“A real surprise to me is that ageism is alive,” says Pollard. “So I had quite a long period outside of work to reset.”

Today, Pollard works in the transportation industry, but not in aviation.

Alfredo de Vera, Sydney, 60

“I thought it was a secure job,” says Alfredo de Vera. But once the one-time Qantas driver was laid off, he says he had “no option but to face the real world”.

“I looked for a job as a driver. Also I’m a mechanic, so I went back to apply for a mechanic’s job and after eight weeks, I found a new job.”

Today, he is only employed off and on. Because his wife and three adult sons work, he can muddle through periods of underemployment. “If I’ve got a job, I share the bills,” says de Vera, from the southern suburb of Allawah. “But if I don’t, I just let them feed me.”

As a TWU member for 15 years, de Vera thought he would benefit from the union’s lawsuit against Qantas, but like many of his co-workers, he is yet to see any of the compensation money aside from the $9000.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn has not responded to his calls, he says, which is a point of frustration. “Also I’m very, very angry about my union,” he says of the TWU. “I’ve been with a union for too long. I don’t know why.”

TWU national secretary Michael Kaine says the union “went to the legal ends of the Earth to wage an improbable but ultimately successful campaign to bring Qantas to account for the illegal sacking of 1700 workers. We stand by that record”.

Three months after the TWU’s win, de Vera got fed up with trying to get through to the organisation, and quit. He knows 20 others of a similar age from Qantas who have suffered, ending up battling for work.

“I lost my confidence,” he says. “I’m scared that it [the lay-off] is going to happen again.” But it hasn’t stopped him applying to rejoin Qantas. So far, he has been unsuccessful.

Don Dixon, Sydney, 65

After the mass firing, former ramp supervisor Don Dixon became the head TWU delegate of Qantas nationally. The role has kept him in touch with ex-Qantas employees waiting for payments.

Dixon had worked at Qantas for 20 years when the firing occurred and was 60 at the time. He has not had a job since. “Zero people want a 60-year-old carpenter,” he says.

Upon taking the role as union delegate, Dixon now says he was a “bit naive” in his expectations. “I didn’t think six years later I’d be still sitting here talking to you, waiting to be paid.”

Everyone, all stakeholders, “including the Federal Court, Maurice Blackburn, the TWU” underestimated the enormity of the case, Dixon says.

“I thought people would be more forthcoming in trying to get this resolved quickly, but they haven’t been, and that’s been a big problem.”

Dixon has muddled through the past six years, helped by his wife’s income and money from investments and properties. But none of that replaces the solid income Qantas once provided. “It’s been a marathon.”

Asked how the delay has affected Dixon, he says it has been “incredibly frustrating”.

“That’s the sentiment of all the affected workers: ‘How come everyone else gets paid except us?’

“I was one of the fortunate ones that had a trade, and I chose to go [to Qantas]. There were a lot of people who didn’t choose to go there; they had to go there because it was an unskilled workforce.”

Dixon says even today, some ex-employees still think they’re going to be called back to work. “I must have told them 500 times: ‘It’s over, the door is closed, mate.’”

When Qantas announced the outsourcing in November 2020, the Transport Workers Union almost immediately sued to block the move. Qantas, under Joyce, fought it in court. Qantas lost the case in July 2021, when the Federal Court ruled its decision to outsource 1700 jobs had been partially motivated by upcoming pay negotiations, which is against the law. The High Court upheld the ruling in 2023 and Justice Michael Lee put the company to the rhetorical sword in a 2025 penalty judgment.

The airline had “adamantine self-righteousness” and conveyed only half-believable regret. It was the “wrong kind of sorry”, Lee concluded as he slapped a $90 million penalty on Qantas, and gave $50 million to the union, after the airline had already agreed to pay $120 million in compensation.

Calculating who is owed what has proved complicated. Maurice Blackburn says the payment scheme covers 1820 affected employees. “Processing each claim requires individual assessment rather than a single bulk calculation,” it says.

“The work is detailed and complex and requires the administrator to engage on an individual basis with all claimants.” It includes locating “claimants, verifying identity, reviewing, and assessing complex individual financial loss claims” and reviewing and determining individual non-economic loss claims.

For the economic loss alone, the law firm has inspected 17,500 individual tax documents while auditing them for discrepancies – nearly 10 per ex-worker. Non-economic loss, which can include stress and trauma, has involved independent medical examinations.

Maurice Blackburn says the court-approved compensation scheme required new systems and procedures. But “the time frames are within those anticipated for a complex settlement administration”.

It expects workers to “be advised of the estimated amount they will be eligible to receive shortly”. Then they get to apply for a review of their non-economic loss. And so the aftermath for workers lingers, and the waiting rolls on.

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